POTD 1 of 365

So, I'm participating in a three-sixty-five this year - meaning, that I will be taking, and posting, one picture per day for all of 2011. Thank goodness this isn't a leap year, as I don't know if I could handle the commitment of posting 366 shots.

For each shot, I'll get into a little detail about the subject, the setup, or both. For most of them taken in my basement "psteudio", I'll try to include a setup shot as well.

In any event, this is the first picture:



Controlling the highlights on this shot was difficult, as you could imagine. Everything was shiny. It's even sitting on piece of glass.

I settled on a darkish room, a 580EX II, and a Strobies Softbox. I set the camera to f/11 and 4 seconds, on a 2-second delay.

When I heard the shutter open, I popped the flash manually, with the test button, at points around the cup and saucer.

In retrospect, boxing the shot in with foam-core and pointing flashes at the inside corners may have worked better, and would have been more repeatable with fixed flashes.

So - that's one. It was originally posted on 1/1/11.